Forest Die-off
gregladen | March 30, 2015There is some interesting new work carried out by researchers at Dartmouth College and the USDA Forest Service on the relationship between the Mountain Pine Beetle, major die-offs of forests in North America, and climate change.
The Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a kind of “bark beetle” (they don’t bark, they live in bark) native to western North America. They inhabit a very wide range of habitats and are found from British Columbia all the way south to Mexico. In British Columbia alone, the pine beetle, though a fairly complex process, has managed to destroy 16 of 55…